Crafe Tec Heydra
by eeveekitty85
Summary: You are not alone.


**Crafe Tec Heydra**

**Notes: **Found the idea in…hmm…the annual I think, the recent one. The page on the Doctor was just fascinating, and I had to write _something_…Rose and Ten.

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"Crafe Tec Heydra," announced the Doctor proudly.

"Bless you," replied Rose impishly.

"Be serious," he said, rolling his eyes. "Officially the loneliest planet in the galaxy. The only thing for light years is it's sun."

"Sounds like a bundle of laughs," muttered Rose.

"Yeah well, I've heard some interesting rumours about this place…very, very, very interesting," said the Doctor, who sounded like he was trying to be enigmatic. "Come on."

He led the way across the valley they had landed in, all rough shingle and cracked earth. It reminded Rose of the quarries used to portray hostile alien landscapes in science fiction programmes, except all the rocks were a pale blue colour, and there were various potholes in it of different sizes and depths.

"Looks like someone's been digging," she commented, skipping lightly around one such hole.

"Close, but no cigar," said the Doctor, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. "They're craters, left from meteor storms, loads of them."

"That's strange considering there's nothing around," Rose pointed out.

"That's the problem, no other planets or satellites to shield it. And they don't get burned up either, the atmosphere's just that little bit too thin to bother a decent sized lump of rock…fancy a bit of climbing?" he asked with a grin. Rose looked ahead of her. They had reached the edge of the valley and were facing an incline too steep to walk straight up. It wasn't what she'd call a cliff, but it was certainly not a hill.

"If you can pick out a safe path. And I mean _safe_, not an approximation," she warned, wagging a finger.

"Didn't I ever tell you I was half mountain goat?" he asked, starting to clamber over boulders, looking around for a good route.

"I've got a dozen bruises from the last time you took me climbing that'll prove you wrong," she said wryly.

He pulled a childish face. "You didn't fall _that _far."

The sky above them began to darken. Black clouds crept across the horizon.

"Should I have brought an umbrella?" asked Rose, looking down anxiously at the pale coloured top she had chosen that morning.

"Well…probably would have been a good idea, yeah," said the Doctor, briefly glancing up at the sky, then making a grab for a ledge. Hauling himself over, he stood up and brushed off his hands, then offered one to Rose. "Don't worry too much though, we should be under cover soon. We're looking for a cave…about…yae high…maybe half a yae more, but I can't be that far off…" He gestured with his free hand as Rose scrambled to her feet beside him, grinning. This 'new Doctor', as she still called him in her head, used the English language (if that was what he was speaking in; did the TARDIS translate for her?) in a way that could only be described as 'interesting'.

"Thought you were more adventurous than that Doctor," she said, her hair whipped into tangles as she looked out across the deserted planet.

"It's what's _inside _the cave that counts," he said, grinning at her enthusiastically. "Caves are interesting places. They could just be full of stalagmites and such but you never know…cave drawings…giant green maggots…"

"Maggots?" Rose looked alarmed.

"No wait, that was a mine wasn't it? Right, better get going," he said, clapping his hands together and striding off across the thin grass. Rose hurried to keep up.

"Do you have any idea where this cave is supposed to be then?" she asked.

"Not sure, but--" He was cut off by an ominous rumbling from the sky above them. Lightning flashed across the sky and Rose looked down at her top again. The Doctor noticed her anxiety and sighed, rolling his eyes. "Honestly, you humans, always so bothered by a bit of rain…gahhhh!" He jumped as more lightning crackled through the sky. Rose smirked.

"OK…OK…I'm OK…" said the Doctor, clutching at his chest. "I just…I don't think I like lightning…"

"And my top doesn't like rain," said Rose pointedly.

"Here," he said, slipping off his long overcoat and passing it to her. "That should do the trick, don't you think?"

"Thanks," she said, smiling as she put it on. She wriggled a little. "Still warm," she said, her tongue between her teeth. He grinned back as the first heavy drops of rain began to fall.

"Come on, let's head over there," he said, grabbing her hand as they raced through the storm. The rain lashed down almost viciously and Rose suddenly felt very glad of the Doctor's heavy coat. The Doctor himself was getting soaked to the skin, his hair plastered to his head, but he didn't seem to mind. They had reached a rock face, made of some kind of sedimentary rock that crumbled under Rose's fingers. Shivering despite the coat, she hopped a little to keep warm, then gave a loud shriek and promptly disappeared.

The Doctor dropped to his knees and peered down the rough hole she had left. She hadn't fallen too far, not even two metres, but she still looked very grumpy.

"Looks like you found an entrance Rose!" he teased.

"Yeah, now come down here and say it," she threatened, standing up and easing out her neck. "That wasn't my most elegant landing."

"Mind your head," he said, dropping down gracefully beside her. He grinned. "Second pocket on the left."

"What?"

"My torch. Please," he said, holding out his hand. Rose fumbled in the pockets then passed it to him.

"Right, since we're down here, we might as well explore," he said, shining the narrow beam of light down the tunnel in front of them.

"You are _soaked_," she said, giggling as a drop of water ran down his nose. His wet hair was beginning to stick up in mad little clumps.

"So are you," he said, pulling her hair gently and flicking the water droplets in her face. "Come on." He stooped as they half walked, half crawled down the gently sloping tunnel. The air grew even colder as they stumbled down the narrow passage, listening to the water dripping from the glistening walls.

Eventually the tunnel widened out into a cave, and the Doctor grinned into the darkness. "Found it!" he said jubilantly, swinging the torch around to look at all the walls. Rose tripped over a stalagmite (or was it a stalactite? She could never remember) rising from the floor in her haste to follow him and found herself nose to nose with a wall. And on that wall…

"Cave drawings?" she called out. The Doctor swung around and joined her at once, passing her the torch and moving his hands over the crude paintings. Then he licked them (something else about the 'new Doctor' Rose was getting used to) and grimaced.

"Primitive ink, made from some sort of insect," he explained. Then he stopped and touched one of the stick figures. "Rose, shine the torch over here for a second," he murmured. She obliged and moved to peer over his shoulder, the light revealing what looked like writing above the pictures. The pictures themselves were faded and completely worn away in part, but they seemed to be representatives of a war, of two species fighting.

"Can you read it?" she asked, nodding towards the writing.

"Just about. My knowledge of Heydran hieroglyphs might be a bit rusty…but…it says, '_We have heard it. They fight_'." Rose glanced at him. His eyes looked a bit watery.

"You OK?" she asked, feeling a little awkward. He smiled weakly.

"Right here," he said, pointing to a solitary figure walking away from the fight. The only survivor. And underneath…"'_You are not alone_.'"

Rose looked at the figure, feeling her heart flutter as she touched it's face with her fingertip. "But that's…that's you," she said, a little wistfully. "The old you. Leather jacket an' all."

"'_They fight'_," he said, carefully expressionless. "I heard the rumours but I didn't…I couldn't believe it at first. These paintings used to be on the side of a mountain. But the planet changed, continents shifted, mountains were buried. The people died…how did they know? How did they hear?"

"The Time War," said Rose, and from the way his expression darkened slightly she knew she was right. "The last Time War. Daleks…and your people. Time Lords."

The Doctor gazed at the pictures. "You never forget," he said eventually. His voice didn't shake, but the raw pain was so apparent that it almost hurt Rose to listen to him. He turned towards her. "But you know that, don't you Rose?"

"You're not supposed to forget," she said, almost fiercely. She seized his face in her hands roughly and he stared right back, not blinking, almost daring her to go just a little bit further, to close that gap. Instead she sighed and ruffled his wet hair affectionately. "_You are not alone_," she insisted. "You've got the TARDIS, you've got your memories. And you've got me."

He attempted a smile and she let go of his face, taking his hand instead.

"Come with me," she said calmly, and led him back out into the storm.

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Yeah, a little pointless, but hopefully worthwhile nonetheless.


End file.
